Our Trip to Honduras
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Paradise: Roatan Island, Honduras
Of all that we saw on our adventures in Honduras, I must say that Roatan was the highlight for me. It's an island about an hour and a half off the northern coast. We took a boat ride there in the afternoon and returned the next afternoon - not near enough time for all there was to see. And we really didn't take a lot of pictures...we went to a village called West End at night to check out the restaurants and dancing on the beach. It was beautiful. But the real beauty was when we went to West Bay the next morning. I have never seen anything like it. This place is the best kept secret of Honduras and I kind of hope it stays that way. It's a great place to vacation especially because there aren't too many people.
Marcela, hanging out in the shade before we went swimming.
Marcela and Aunt Judy swimming in the water. The boats in the area have glass bottoms so that you can take rides and look at the coral reef and all of the beautiful fish.
Tour 3: Cuero y Salado National Park
Our final tour was close to La Ceiba, Honduras in a National Park called "Cuero y Salado." We took about a half hour drive to the park and then went out on a boat into a river and lagoon area where we saw tons of wildlife.
We arrived at a very small town that had "train service" to the national park office. It was probably 5 or 6 miles in the train going about 15 miles an hour. The train was just two cars like the one you see above and ran on a tractor motor or something.
This is at the national park dock. We stopped and had some famous "Valiadas" here. Valiadas are basically a quesadilla with refried beans. They're famous in the northern part of the country.
This is a "bleeding tree." The guide says if you cut into this tree is gushes out a blood-like substance.
There were tons of turtles in the lagoon. This one was hilarious - he had his neck stretched out as far as he could "sunning himself."
Friday, January 19, 2007
To Miami Honduras
Our second tour in Tela was to a unique little village called Miami which was located on a very small peninsula - on one side was the Caribbean and on the other was a fresh-water lagoon. You could walk from one side to the other within a minute. This little village was completely demolished during Hurricane Mitch, but was rebuilt afterwards.
A view of some little islands in the background called Cayos Cochinos. This was taken from a lookout pont before we arrived at the end of the peninsula.
Lance, Judy, and I went on this tour while Armando stayed back in Tela with Marcela, playing on the beach.
Our sister Lilly requested one thing of us while we were there...to write her and Billy's names in the sand and take a picture of it. So Lance did...with a little humor.
There were tons of pelicans.
There were local villagers that make their living catching crab in the canal and lagoon and selling them. There were all kinds of little floaters that had traps at the bottom. We stopped and pulled one up and found some crab. Our tour guide bought a bunch from them and then on our way back we stopped by his place and he honked the horn. His wife came out and got them to make for dinner.
This is a white-faced monkey we saw in the mangroves. We pulled our boat up to the trees and watched them for awhile.
The branches of the trees there all grow toward the water. It's like something you would see on a creepy cartoon where all of the trees have fingers that are going to reach out and get you. When we would go through the little canals and there would be trees over us, the tour guide would say, if a green snake falls on you, don't worry, they're not poisonous - just throw it out of the boat - sometimes they fall from the trees. Luckily that didn't hapen - I would have died of heart-failure right there. But, if you look closely at this picture, you can see a little crab crawling up the tree branches from the water - it looks like a spider.
What's Up Doc?
We stayed near the dock in Tela, Honduras - a dock that is mainly used now just for fishing off the edge. It's old and rickity and crabs infested. But it gave us a great view of the sunset, the surrounding mountains, and the ocean. Plus we got to see local fisherman in action with just a fishing line and something tied to it.
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